Really wrestling with this question due to various personal things lately and just curious where yous draw the line on this?
I’ve done so many things in life that, at the time, I would’ve described as self-protective in a self-loving way, but where I really was just being a selfish ass. Not out of malice, but out of a lack of self-love or -esteem and total ignorance of it. I’ve seen so many people do the same thing. And I’ve tolerated so much shit over the years I thought was self-loving self-protection which was really just people being selfish asses. I’ve probably also labelled quite a few people selfish which were just caring for themselves in earnest.
People are complicated and it’s honestly hard as fuck to make this distinction sometimes imo.
It very much is. It’s a hard line to draw. I struggle with identifying which is which myself. I think it goes on a case by case basis. So many factors to consider.
Sorry this didn’t add much to the conversation but yeah.
Like many emotional, spiritual, and moral upstarts within Western society, the whole fad of “self love” is a genuine and a good thing that the system has ruthlessly tried to co-opt and twist into something poisonous.
Many people who chant “self love” are indeed using it as a weapon to shield their Western narcissism, selfishness, self-absorption and lack of consideration and compassion from criticism.
However, there is genuinely a place where we have to love ourselves despite our human failures and flaws. We have to take care of ourselves, and make sure we are not completely open to exploitation from those who will walk all over us and use up every crumb we leave unprotected.
It sucks because this is a genuinely, deeply anti social society, and that is a problem. But there are also many monstrous people this society has created, ironically lending validity to anti social behaviors and strategies. It is a cycle that as communists we should strive to break as often as we can; if I have the energy, I always give it to others, but I also have learned to recognize when I am nearing the end of my rope and continuing to give and give will damage my machine and thus render me ineffective in the long term in delivering future energy. “Do not continue to run on a broken leg or you will never run again” is what I tell myself. I know I have a duty to do good proactively every day, but I also recognize when I need to cut myself some slack and be lazy, or self indulgent, or when I need to ask for help.
Ultimately, I agree with Teezy, it is very case-by-case, as with many things in this highly convoluted society.
Great comment actually. I mostly framed this in a personal and psychological context, but being on a communist board, it obviously makes sense to connect it to society more broadly.
As such you’re definitely right. The way “self-love” is defined currently can’t be separated from the society that defines it. This society being absurdly compartmentalized, individualistic, alienated, isolated and human relations to others and themselves being increasingly commodified makes a non-narcissistic understanding of it difficult as fuck. Any definition of self-love under capitalism will always be conducive to reinforce the cultural hegemony of liberalism. As such we will always struggle with the concept, because it can never be fully healthy and the question I asked is one that naturally follows from the contradictory definition we get.
However, there is genuinely a place where we have to love ourselves despite our human failures and flaws. We have to take care of ourselves, and make sure we are not completely open to exploitation from those who will walk all over us and use up every crumb we leave unprotected.
100%. We all have flaws, but we don’t all have to hate ourselves for them. That’s not to say we have to celebrate or excuse these flaws, but we can’t hate ourselves for them either, even just from a pragmatic pov. Hating ourselves for our flaws doesn’t help anyone (but maybe some bourgeois looking to profit from the resulting insecurity).
“Do not continue to run on a broken leg or you will never run again” is what I tell myself
Exactly right. There obviously is a line between self-abandonment/-sacrifice and self-absorbtion. That, I’d say, is healthy self-protection and born out of love. It’s out of respect for the self, for our own values and emerges from a belief that we are worthy of standing for our values, that we hold up to them, because we deserve to be that person. However for that to be healthy we need healthy values and that’s the crux of the matter. This deeply anti-social society teaches us anti-social values and actively tries to get us to not stand for social values and morals.
It’s just a sad state of things, one I’ve now witnessed a couple of times, that people start out deeply insecure, with no boundaries and no self-respect to enfroce them or to stand up for their values. They look for help to become healthier - to therapists, books, etc. And after working hard, sometimes for years, they come out the other side with a total disregard for their fellow human beings, because “self-love” or “self-protection”. As if the solution to the deep insecurity and powerlessness they used to feel in this society for commodifying and isolating them was to lean into it and treat other people as disposable commodities.
Ultimately though, definitiely as @TeezyZeezy said, something to be judged on a case by case basis.
